Death Note news articles

Loud and over-emotional, Death Note's Misa-Misa appears not to have been blessed with much in the brain department.

Which is a shame, when she's up against the likes of Light, L and Kiyomi Takada and playing a deathly game as Second Kira. Yet she has one up on all of them, not to mention a splattering of NPA police officers and nearly all attendant Wammy House geniuses. Misa Amane survives. Moreover, she's never positively identified as Second Kira; let alone officially arrested, tried and punished for her crimes in mass murderer.

Which is more than Light Yagami manages.

Unlike both him and super-smart Teru Mikami, Misa contrives as well to be missing from the killing line-up in the Yellow Box Warehouse.

Though twice captured by Wammy detectives, and stalked by two others, she also sidesteps being murdered (directly or inadvertently) by them. Which again is more than can be said for top of her class Ms Grace herself, Kiyomi Takada, as well as usual suspects Yagami and Mikami, and their sometime stand-in Kyosuke Higuichi.

Alone of all the Kiras, Misa Amane gets to walk free at the end.

What happens next is all of her own doing, within her own control. Whether that's the dramatic suicide of the anime or the continuing on to world stardom as an actress and model, as per the live-action Death Note movies.

Not so stupid after all then.

Death Note's Misa Achieves Dividends When She Acts

Misa Amane with evidence to prove Higuichi is Kira

Whether its in retribution, career, love, favours or contribution to the Kira case, Misa Amane rarely fails to achieve any goal for which she reaches.

Nobody who ever attacked her survives long enough to gloat in their assault. Her street assailant is taken out by a Death God (Gelus); her family's murderer is initially sentenced through due legal process then killed by Kira while in prison; Soichiro Yagami threatens her with a gun - he doesn't survive a Mafia bullet later on in the tale; her torturous captor L and his carer Watari are both slaughtered by a second shinigami Rem, again on Misa's behalf; Mello and Matt both stalk her, and they are killed within weeks by Kira and/or Kira supporters; while Takada tries to take Misa's man and ends up incinerated in a lorry.

Even Light Yagami, who exploited her constantly for years, finishes the epic crawling in sobbing indignity upon the floor, crying out for Misa in his death throes.

Not all of those were of Misa's doing, nor even at her instigation, but she's certainly left with nobody alive who so much at looked at her with ill intent.

Then you get her career. As anyone who has ever set out with a dream of fame and fortune may attest, it's not easy to achieve stardom, yet Misa Amane is utterly in demand for both acting roles and modelling assignments

In the Death Note live-action movies, Misa Amane's fame is ever-growing. By the fourth, Death Note: Light Up the NEW World - to be released in October 2016 - she is at the top of her career, a Japanese idol with a firm presence in the entertainment industry; a famous name known worldwide as an actress.

During the week that Misa's introduced into Death Note manga and anime, she's on the cover of Eighteen Magazine, apparently a popular journal for the Japanese fashionatas (presumably the youthful ones).

Misa-Misa set out for fame and fortune, and got it. On her terms too, as her demands that she not kiss the main romantic male lead in one of her movies demonstrates.

In fact, as the corporate arc unfolds, Misa's work on that film shoot close by Yotsuba Tower certainly helps with the rescue of Matsuda, then later the capture of Yotsuba Kira himself.

And let's not forget that it was Misa acting unilaterally that managed to force a confession from Higuichi. That was her contribution to the Kira case. No fuss; simply done; back within an hour or two with the evidence that the men had been searching for months to secure.

Not bad for someone supposedly without any wit or two brain cells to rub together.

Nor was that the only moment wherein Misa Amane proves more resourceful and calmly able to get what she wants than all else within the Death Note plot-line.

How Clever Misa Amane Outwits Both L and Light in the Hunt for Kira

Misa Amane tracking down Light Yagami

Half a dozen chapters pass before L narrows down his hunt for Kira to a single major suspect - Light Yagami.

Misa Amane manages the same in about a week and that's only because a few days pass between the broadcast of her tapes and the proposed meeting in Otaka.

Even unto the moment of L's death and, in passing his legacy to his Wammy House successors, through to the end of Death Note - at the staging of the Yellow Box confrontation seven years on - none of the Wammys succeed in positively gaining a confession from Light that he was indeed Kira. Nor the smoking gun evidence that would convict him of the crimes enacted in that persona.

Misa Amane pulled that one off within the same aforementioned week.

Granted she had foreknowledge of the Death Note and the handy boon of shinigami eyes at her disposal; but L and the Wammys had the entire world's political, military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, plus experts in every field and academic discipline, ready to do their bidding, and/or the Mafia. L could also call upon criminal expertise in the shape of Aiber the Conman and Wedy the top cat burglar.

Misa Amane didn't have any of that. Therefore it was perhaps quid pro quo on such scores.

Moreover, Misa not only located Light, tracked him down to his home and got a confession to being Kira out of him, she did it all without a) Light finding out who she was and b) L knowing of her existence until she began repeatedly to be seen with Light himself.

In fact, we could go as far as to say it was only her association with Light Yagami which put Misa in the frame as Second Kira. But then again, she was only there because she insisted upon being Light's girlfriend and being openly known as such in public. The latter orchestrated entirely by Misa herself in a succession of surprise meetings outside his home, at his university and wherever else she could insert herself into his presence.

Outgunned utterly by his enforced beau, Light had neither choice nor say in the matter.

Overly Attached Girlfriend Misa Amane: Is She Really So Dependent on Light?

Stereotyped throughout the Death Note fandom as the overly dependent girlfriend from Hell, that description seems only partially correct under analysis.

Misa certainly goes after and gets what she wants in the romantic stakes. Moreover, from the onset, she'll use every manipulative trick in the book to keep her man and ensure his romantic availability is retained for herself alone.

Who can forget the chilling statement that she will kill any other woman that Light dates? Basically laying it on the line at their first meeting that he gets her or nobody. Those are her terms.

In this way - however exploitative, unfair and downright psychotic it is - Misa cannot easily be cast aside. She might present herself as utterly dependent upon Light, but in reality, it's the other way around. He cannot act in some quite key situations without her Shinigami eyes; or without the usage of her Death Note and the fact of her ownership of the same.

While ostensibly Light calls all the shots, Misa gets precisely what she requires at any given time.

She wants retribution for the killing of her family, she gets it; she wants to meet Kira, she engineers it; she demands to be Light Yagami's girlfriend, she gives him no choice in the matter; she wants him to move in with her, that occurs circa the beginning of the second arc; she decides it's time to get engaged, and Misa doesn't even bother to consult with Light on that one, she tells Kiyomi Takada first instead.

Financially, Misa was a woman of independent means for years before Light Yagami secured the Kira Task Force position to consider himself the same. She was the one with the money, the prestige, the social standing and the sole occupancy of an apartment. She bought her own furniture, clothes, make-up and every other possession with her own funds, including the phone and its network charges that she presents to Light and pays for on his behalf.

Even when Light gets a job and asks Misa to stop working as per social expectation, she could (and does in the Death Note movies) return to her career at any time.

Misa Amane as the Archetypal Anime Genki Girl

In most fan imaginings, Misa-Misa is Death Note's very energetic answer to that stalwart of anime character archetypes - the Genki Girl. She shouts, screams, rushes about, glomps, squees and generally acts like the average three year old on a profusion of E numbers. Or, indeed, E.

There's plenty of scenes to throw into the mix in support of this designation. Yet look more closely. Shouldn't that be every scene?

In reality, Misa seems to switch Genki Girl on or off, or applies attributes to a precise level, depending upon the situation and who's watching. She's like someone who's read all about Genki Girl and figured that she can pull it off, so goes for it whenever the persona will cover a multitude of personal sins and/or throw people off the scent of her actual intelligence.

Take for example her meeting the Yagami women, whilst visiting Light at home. There Misa is the epitome of maturity; a demure Japanese lady full of politeness and decorum, give or take the length of her skirt. Yet outside, alone with Light on another occasion, she glomps him with all the enthusiastic screaming passion of the Genki Girl personified, now that his mother isn't watching.

Nor does she bamboozle Yotsuba Kira Hidechi with a steady stream of relentless words. Those she chooses are articulate and leading, with adequate gaps in between for him to speak enough to condemn himself.

Meanwhile, there's absolutely nothing of the motormouth, highly animated and over-emotional Genki Girl in Misa when she's detained by L as suspected Second Kira. To be fair, she's also in a full-body straitjacket, so none of that excessively expressive movement is physically able to be on show.

Yet you get the impression it wouldn't be either.

Hidden Reserves of Strength in Misa-Misa

That prolonged scene in a straitjacket, effectively being tortured into submission by L, tells a lot about Misa Amane's true strength of character.

With his arms handcuffed behind his back, Light plays the game in full knowledge of his Kira-hood for a week, then gives that contextual understanding up. Within three days, he's pleading, begging, demanding to be set free, sure that he's not Kira and adamant that he's going to say so repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Misa Amane remains silent and strapped upright to a board, blind-folded, devoid of human contact beyond an electronic voice communicating through a speaker. Not a single word uttered in condemnation nor defense. Nothing whatever to make it worth her torturers' time in detaining her.

When she eventually does feel herself cracking, she finally does speak, but only to ask Rem to kill her. The words enigmatic without context to those listening on. The remainder of her days tortuously attached in that position in a state of near sensory deprivation would have been passed without knowledge of Kira nor her part in the Death Note killings. Yet she still doesn't say much nor beg as Light Yagami did.

Coming to the conclusion that she's been abducted as per her fame, Misa intelligently attempts to humanise herself and make a deal with her abductor.

L eventually has to let her go for the sake of nothing incriminating being divulged to prove her role as Second Kira, nor to use as evidence against Light. How many others could have withstood so much under torture? Most in that position would be agreeing, admitting or issuing confessions to all and sundry, just to make the torture stop.

Misa Amane: Worldly Wise and Self-Possessed of All her Assets and Skills

Nobody is suggesting for one instant that Death Note's Misa Amane is some unsung genius (though an interesting case might be made for that). However she certainly isn't the dim-witted, unaware character so many make her out to be.

She has drive, intelligence and self-knowledge enough to ensure that she gets what she wants, through a considered application of the attributes and tools in her personal arsenal. She can definitely identify goals, pinpoint way and devise strategies to achieve them, then action those tactics with usually astounding results.

Mostly Misa is fabulous at keeping herself under the radar by ensuring those around her think she's too stupid to understand much that is happening.

However, she proves time and again that she can read situations - and especially people - with a keen accuracy. She can be cute enough to sexually manipulate the men; childish enough to annoy or delight, but never be taken seriously enough for people not to scheme in her vicinity. She sees more than she ever lets on.

She can charm anyone, and uses that to great effect to get people waiting on her hand and foot.

However, when the occasion calls for it, Misa's intelligence shows all the above to be the veneer of an actress. Probably a psychopathic one at that, but certainly not the Genki Girl that she's studiously manufactured her self-image to be.

Welcome seekers after sama, kana and qi! You won't be the first to want to reverse your life's fortunes; otherwise embrace words to change the world; take steps to transform yourself into a hero; divert humanity away from its current perverse course; perfect its core that all may sing together - refraining from discordance, aligned in peace and harmony; gain insight into the working of the universe; realize your dreams; reach for the stars; sail across the cosmos and converse with the divine; enchant and charm Kannon at the gates of wisdom; seize manna from the Gods; invoke matter from the kether; traverse the mysteries and become God of this New World.

It's not unknown.

But no matter what foolish idea inflames your passion and ignites your will. Before you take your first steps onto the path of making it real, you will need some guidance. Sound the intro, maestro! And enter The Magician.

The Many Roles of the Tarot Magician

The second card of the Major Arcana starts the story proper. It stands at number one, as The Fool is zero. Without meeting or becoming The Magician, the Fool is merely a broiling mess of notions, running around like a headless chicken with no direction in which to pursue them.

If nothing else, the Magician is a doorkeeper - providing access to another (or the wider) world, opening a gateway onto an appropriate path, or acting as a way-marker signing the route to take. Usually this role contextualizes the bigger picture and sets out the destination. The Wise Man is concerned with destiny. Though the advice should be taken indiscriminately.

The Magician isn't necessarily on your side. The guidance given or the way forward illuminated might be a service provided in all innocence and altruism. Nevertheless, he/she has an agenda of their own and the knowledge to manipulate others too.

They may play a dual role - making Mafia profits sky-rocket, whilst diverting its resources into capturing a Death Note - and could as easily be trickster instead of consigliere.

Or a charlatan. This all-knowing being may present themselves as God, then turn out to merely be a man and a murderer at that. Worse still, a serial killer implicating you in the guise of the great detective L.

But the differentiation isn't always that clear cut either. Nothing so black and white.

The Magician juggles many roles, generally playing all the same time; multi-tasking meaning depending upon who is being addressed. One person's terrorist being another's freedom fighter and all that, while the manipulation might be to save yourself from yourself, or to aid a greater cause.

Either way, The Magician will certainly give our hero something to ponder and a route (or twelve) to take next. There's the potential for destiny-laden adventure and opportunities lessons to be learned here, if only never to be that gullible again.

The Meaning of Magician in the Major Arcana

Christians are most familiar with The Magician as the Magi - Three Wise Men in modern versions of the Bible; twelve Pharisee priests in the closest we have to the original - who visited the newborn Christ with gifts.

For everyone else, the name has largely denigrated to the level of sleight-of-hand illusionists and tricksters on stage, or grown fantastical in figures from stage or literature like Gandalf, Merlin and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It used to mean so much more. The hints of it permeate our lexicon. We glimpse their greatness in words sharing the same root, like magnate, mega, magnitude, magnus, magus and majesty. That last also containing a hint of their skill as spokespeople, mediators, lecturers, teachers and orators - 'gest', as in 'jester', 'gesticulate', 'gesture' and the 'gist' of a story. It comes from Middle English 'to recite a tale', originating in Latin 'geste' or 'gesta' 'to perform deeds; to act'. By the time it hit 13th century France, 'geste' meant to 'narrate an heroic tale'.

Stories could (and often still do) command the will of a people. Which is why governments today are so keen to pressure the press into toeing the party line. In Medieval Italy and France, which is where our earliest extant tarot cards were made, the majesty of magicians led to them adjudicating in delicate matters, acting as counsellors or speaking on behalf of less learned individuals.

The Magicians as magisters, in fact, or magistrates. That 'gist' sometimes turning into its other form of 'iurare' to bring us to jury, and conjurer; or 'joculate' as joker or juggler. Wise counsellor or trickster indeed. Furthermore, the French word grammairien referred to 'learned men; magicians', whose ability to know the power and perfect usage of words gave us 'grammar'.

But akin to magician is also master, maestro, mahatma, maharaji, maharishi, yogi, guru, the one who knows. The Japanese would call them dai-sensai, or O-sensai, doshi, Rōshi, or know them as sifi. In addition to great wisdom and skill, The Magician brings into play the tools that the Fool might need t0 embark upon their journey.

In ancient Persia, the Magos were the learned members of the priestly caste, adept at astrology. They could give you the overview of your life and destiny, as it was written in the stars, taking in the knowledge of what constellation was on the ascendency or ruling within a certain house. It was up to you what you did with that information and how you let it guide your lives.

Over the centuries, their spiritual descendants have been known as the adepts in a variety of other fortune-telling, mind expanding, soul perfecting or perception enhancing skills. For example, those magnificent seekers delving into the Kabbalah/Cabala/Qabala as scholars, scryers, practitioners, occultists, alchemists, diviners, philosophers, Hermetic code-breakers and ceremonial magicians.

Enlightened beings who know The Way and what it might mean for you. But if it's shared - and done so entirely, selectively or else strewn with misinformation - and how that translates into relevancy for your own life's destiny, only a Fool can know in passing through the realm of the Magi.

The Magi In All Their Guises: Major Arcana Death Note's The Magician Card

The Death Note itself can be seen as falling right into the realm of The Magician. In fact, it's practically the Three Magi represented here in the notebook, as its role is considered in relation to Light Yagami.

Firstly Light has to find the shinigami's notebook, which serves the dual purpose of opening his eyes to the existence of a world beyond his own and highlighting its possibilities. Hitherto unconsidered (or disbelieved) realities are presented as a pathway upon which to forge his own destiny. It's the Tarot Magician as gatekeeper, signpost and luminary of higher knowledge.

However, its also the Trickster, or Charlatan, insofar as the falling Death Note serves Ryuk's agenda first and foremost. Its presence on Earth is set to alleviate the shinigami's boredom. Light will pick it up and, primarily believing it an elaborate prank, use it to the detriment of his own future. Not only will it curse his living years, but condemn his eternal being into the dissolution of Mu. This ultimate destination for Death Note users means that a destiny is foisted upon Light Yagami, manipulated by ignorance and curiosity into foolishly using it without fully translating all of the rules beforehand.

The Death Note wasn't on his side, nor against him. It's an item; a thing without judgement nor partiality. It serves an agenda encapsulated by itself. ('I am that I am' is the So'ham Sanskrit manta; also viewed as the Word of God in Christian mysticism; or 'As above, so below; so below, as above' in Hermetic teachings. All very much part of The Magician's inner knowledge, and here beautifully descriptive of the Death Note too.)

Secondly, Light actually reads the rules written inside the Death Note. Here the shinigami notebook becomes The Magician as a teacher; illuminating the arcane knowledge needed to utilize this supernatural tool. The rules themselves inspire possible ways in which Light may now traverse in order to fulfil his projected destiny.

Even more dramatically comes that third moment of the notebook of death as The Magician in Death Note. That's when the touch of it allows Light's mind to access his memories, previously locked away through rejection of the artefact. Perhaps it's not quite what the ancient Magos would view as accessing the higher self, but it serves the same purpose within the storyline. In an instant, Light Yagami's ignorance is dissolved, when the doors of perception are well and truly opened upon his past. His destination now reached, just as planned.

The Magician as Death Note's Gatekeepers and Arbiters of Destiny

Ryuk is another obvious contender for The Magician's Death Note tarot representative. His appearance directs the plot in a myriad of ways, not least because it clarifies Light Yagami's overview and destiny.

Just like his notebook, the shinigami confirms the existence of previously unknown layers to reality, broadening Light's horizons and information base.

Ryuk stands as guide and gatekeeper to the shinigami realm. Not only can he speak for and translate the Gods, he is one.

Whilst denying Light access to any such services, unless the whim of the moment takes him. Because he can.

The shinigami also acts as arbiter of knowledge concerning eternity and deals available to human users of Death Notes, which he does deign to share. Albeit selective in his choice of snippets to pass on, and deliberately obtuse in the timing of all such communication.

It's too amusing for him not to cause maximum frustration in thus trolling his human Death Note user.

Which all fits in completely with the reason for him being there, performing his role as Earthly sage and sometime mentor. Openly not on anyone's side - but that of his own amusement - Ryuk is the Trickster Mage personified.

His entire performance is dedicated to his own agenda, aligning with those of others only where each party's motives/tactics run in tandem. Or he's persuaded that the potential for entertainment is strong.

The Death God is, after all, quite bored and he's here to alleviate said tedium. Everything that occurs must factor that in first, as top priority, because it's certainly the only reason Ryuk is acting in any capacity right now.

L's Messenger Mage Watari: Herald, Spokesperson and Point of Contact

As gatekeeper to L, Watari's intervention at the Interpol meeting is pure Magician territory.

Not only does it alert all present to the avenue of inquiry now opening up due to the detective's interest in the Kira case, but it allows Matsuda - thus us too - to discover L's existence in the first place.

Thus the Fool takes the first step out of innocence, ignorance and a lack of context for the world.

For the veteran law enforcement agents there, Watari represents destiny in a very practical sense. They don't need to discuss the way forward in their investigation now, because L is involved. He IS the way forward; an option for the situation to be passed up to a higher authority.

(Sneak preview for a later major arcana card - The Hierophant describes L for those with knowledge and experience of his work.)

For Soichiro and Matsuda, Watari's position is doorkeeper to destiny in a much more ethereal way.

To one it will prove downright Fateful, while the other will reach the proposed destination (catching Kira) changed beyond recall.

Destiny's Magister: Roger Ruvie, The Wammy House Ringmaster Tolls Part Two

One day, Wammy House warden Roger Ruvie will be Watari too. His role will encapsulate The Magician in just the same way as Quillsh Wammy, as described above.

Nevertheless, in that Fateful moment imaged as tarot arcana (left), Roger already illustrates several aspects of The Magican card. Each face or facet exhibited simultaneously.

For a start, he's a messenger, delivering the news that the children's idol and surrogate father are both dead. Divining correctly the information received from a transmission's ending. Liaison, wisdom, enlightenment, all wrapped up in that single act.

He's doing so as Wammy's House administrator - which has its root in 'ministry/minister' and from there becomes entrenched in symbolism linked with The Magician. Minister meaning to 'act on behalf of a higher authority', hence a minister of the state in politics or the church (it literally meant 'priest' in Medieval Latin). It gets its secretarial sense from the French, where it became 'servant; overseer; watcher; manager'.

But may also relate to inspiration of a more tuneful note, hence minstrel and musician are both cognitive words. Each obviously pertaining to The Fool, yet The Magician too, as the latter can be former in receipt of self-awareness, context or knowledge, thus driving their own actions.

It all becomes much more blatant, when another cognate is brought into the mix - magistrate or magister. One who directs or adjudicates; making decisions; laying down the law.

Roger is authorized to tell a twelve and fourteen year old that their idolized foster sibling and beloved guardian are dead. Yet nothing of sentimentality here. His job is to collect children from around the world, bring them to The Wammy House and train them as potential successors to L.

His results are majestic. After coldly dismissing Mello's emotional outburst, the first question asked was which of them was chosen as heir. No querying the fact that kids are about to be sent into an arena which killed two adults, one purportedly the world's most genius detective. No options considered.

This Wammy Ringmaster magisterially sends both kids to fight round two; their destination seeming less destined than Fated, with such news extolled like passing bells, louder than ever tonight.

Mello the Consigliere: Death Note Mafia Mage with a Dual Agenda

Mello exemplifies The Magician with a dual agenda, while acting as consigliere within the Mafia family headed by Rod Ross.

It's similar to the previously examined outlook of that other magnate Ryuk, but Mello's motivational duality holds some important differences.

The Magician acts by manipulating an individual's lack of essential knowledge or wisdom. However this doesn't necessary occur every time, only when it suits our canny counsellor's alternate agenda to do so.

Sometimes the concerns will align for both advisor and their directed individual; sometimes not. Regardless, the interests of the latter do not factor into the guidance given by this Mage - whether in counsellor mode, or as councillor representing their client's views and speech to others.

Consigliere (or consigliori) - Mello's position in the Mafia - meant both by the way. Though technically describing solely the counsel given to the Don, consiglieri (in manga and in life) also fulfil many other roles ruled by The Magician. Including, but not limited to, mediating in conflict; liaising on the Don's behalf with important contacts and/or authority figures (judges, police etc.); and keeper/archivist of secrets for the entire Family's, so to retain an overview and warn if trouble may be caused, for example, by a capo acting rashly through ignorance of matters concerning another.

Mello seems to be a good consigliere. At one point Rod Ross is moved to comment that the genius teen has never been wrong in any decision made since joining their Family.

However, no-one should lose sight of reality. Mello was just using the Mafia to achieve his own goals.

The wisdom imparted by Mello as consigliere causes Rod Ross's profits to sky-rocket. Yet those and all other available resources are soon diverted into serving Mello's ambition to secure a Death Note.

After Mello achieves his goal, thus placing a shinigami notebook in the hands of his Mafia family, all agendas probably fell in line, shared and indivisible. For a moment, indeed it seemed to Ross et al that they had absolute power.

And then, in the next moment, they ended up dead. Mello using the lives of the last ones standing to make good his own escape.

Sakura TV as the Charlatan: Showmanship Masquerading as Wisdom

When Sakura TV appoints itself as the voice of Kira, it's an attempt to appear as The Divinely Ordained or Enlightened Magician.

As studio boss and anchor-man, Demegawa's overall aim is to trick unsuspecting individuals into believing the station has some conferred higher knowledge. Therefore attempting to gain the same trust or power given to The Magician.

Or in this case, boost ratings.

The Magician can well act as spokesperson for the people/individuals in dealings with authority, or magistrate dilemmas and/or direct juries. They can certainly translate the divine for those less versed in the sacred mysteries. However, its beholden upon us all to beware false prophets.

In its more negative (or domineering/pompous) aspect, our spokesperson Mage might not say what we wished them to convey.

Think politicians declaiming sentiments which make us cringe or cry, all in our name; or the journalist who twists your words, yet 'quotes' you all the same, in pursuit of a sensational story bearing no relation to what actually occurs; or the parent/guardian/teacher expressing their own views as if they were automatically shared by yourself, ignoring or over-riding any attempt at dissent.

While Kira may experience Sakura TV's antics (in the persona of Demegawa) as the above, every other viewer is watching a charlatan or mountebank in action. A pseudo-priest or trickster mantis preying upon the gullibility of their television audience turned congregation.

On the flip side, even the False Magician may inadvertently act as teacher. The lesson today from Sakura being not to believe everything you hear on TV.

(Particularly when tabled as a Trump; donkey imagery warns us off, as seen below The Magician's board in some ancient tarot decks. Mistake the babbling showmanship of this charlatan for wisdom, and your only sure destiny is to be made feel like an ass.)

Kiyomi Takada: Enlightened Divine Messenger of Death Note

I don't remember who said it, but the quotation snagged in my mind.

Someone was told that David Icke - the footballer turned commentator and write - was now telling all and sundry that he was the Son of God. There was a pause in which the informant gleefully awaited the witty put-down that was sure to follow concerning the subject of their gossip.

"Well?" The other slowly asked. "Has anyone checked if he is?"

And therein lies the rub. How does one verify such a claim? And if we can't, then how do we know for sure whether they're a mounteback babbling lies, or insane, or someone Cassandra cursed to be disbelieved in all the divine truth they tell?

The Magi would know. It tends to be them. Whether reading the portents in divination; searching arcane knowledge to uncover higher truths; or acting as intermediaries between the Gods and us, as the priestly caste or ministering on career paths.

Just occasionally, we get the real thing. Magos aglow with the numen nod - enchanters, prophets, seers, the chosen and invokers; attuned to the Great Music and entrancing with utterances lifted from source; merely mediums through which the universe flows.

Or television anchor woman/newscaster, who just happens to be the right person, at the right time, with a matching warped sense of morality and all the right contacts to be the Messiah.

The divine intermediary aspect of The Magician is represented quite literally by Death Note's Kiyomi Takada, twofold.

She performs her role as Messenger of the God(s) in that Takada is the actual, publicly appointed spokesperson for Kira; while also being the conduit that allows both Kiras - Light Yagami and Teru Mikami - to communicate in open conversation.

No charlatan this. Blessed Takada performs with gravitas; notably refined before this even began. Now perceived by the ever-growing faithful as gentle, radiant, the real thing and absolutely full of grace. Buying into and believing all Light says; mind mired and amazed beyond all rationality.

Le Bateleur Matsuda: Sleight of Hand Illusionist in Death Note

Le Bateleur is the aspect of The Magician most familiar to us in the modern world; give or take a few fantasy movie mages, and their counterpart skills offered as an option for gamers.

This is the stage magician; the conjurer; the sleight-of-hand trickster; the illusionist; the abracadabra, now you see it, now you don't, bateleur drawing in crowds and thrilling them with misdirection, misinformation, smoke and mirrors distraction, before delivering all enrapt and gasping with awe to that climatic moment of The Prestige.

This aspect of The Magician appears throughout the Death Note series. There's even a whole chapter, in Death Note 13: How to Read, devoted to explaining all of the tricks inserted into the storyline by Tsugumi Ohba.

The Death Note Magician tarot card we've chosen to depict Il Bagatto in action features Matsuda faking his own death. Before a stunned crowd of Yotsuba corporate executives, he pulls off The Prestige in garnering their belief that the dressed up Aiber far below on the ground is Matsuda's mangled corpse. Meanwhile, Touta sits safely on a mattress a mere one floor below.

However, we could just as easily picked any of the dozens of scenarios, whereby Death Note's conjurers wash over truth with a new reality, attested by witnesses swearing on oath that they watched throughout.

Like when Light becomes aware he is being watched by surveillance cameras. He quickly acts to manipulate the evidence by a tricky sleight-of-hand illusion.

To the onlooker, it would appear as though he was only studying, while taking those potato chips and eating them. The reality being that Kira was killing criminals with a piece of the Death Note hidden, alongside a miniature TV, inside the chip bag.

Even L was fooled by that one.

So what's your favourite showing for the tarot Death Note Bagatella? Just to check that you kept observing, through all there was to see.

The Three Wise Men (Wam-Magi?)

In the time of Watari, after Kira was born in Japan, wise men from the Wammy's House in Winchester came to Kanto, asking, "Where is the murderer who has been born God of the New World? For we observed his kill count at its rising, and have come to take him down."

When Takimura heard this, he was frightened and all world leaders with him; and calling together all the Kira Task Force and NPA public relations officers, he inquired of them when the Kira was to be arrested. They told him, "In the Yellow Box Warehouse; for so it has been written by Near: 'And you, Takimura, in the land of Japan, are by no means going to know a thing about it, because Mello would have got you killed by then.'"

Then US President David Hoope secretly called - via Watari - for the wise men and begged each in turn to stop threatening to control him into doing worse than Kira, whenever any of them get hold of a Death Note. Then he sent them to Kanto, saying, "Go and search diligently for Kira; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."

When they had heard the POTUS, they got him killed and replaced with George Sairas; and there, ahead of them, went the star Misa Amane that they had seen rising as Second Kira, until she stopped because L had her tortured. When they saw that the Japanese idol had started begging to have her life ended, they were overwhelmed with joy.

On entering the Warehouse, they saw the megalomaniac with Mikami his worshipper; and Near knelt down (the other two forced to too, as they were now dead and puppets). Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of cake, Transformers, and chocolate.

And having painted a vivid picture for Ryuk warning of a future bound to a Death Note now stuck in Near's vault - while Light languished in a prison for the criminally insane for life - Near successfully manipulated the Death God into taking out Light before returning to the shinigami realm. Then the Three Wise Wammys left for their own country, where verily two returned to the toy box and Near took L's Code for himself. And probably Mello's too.

Hold on! One missing from this listing of The Wam-Magi as read from the Book of God's New World:

Bored out of his mind, Il Matto stayed put in Winchester, playing SuperMario and thanking the Gods of the Internet that Kira never came with cyber-terrorism on-line. Else he'd never have been able to get away with hiding behind his lazy, mad, wise Fool routine; playing Tetris instead of getting himself killed in someone else's war. So wise he only ever ranked third and remained forever Il Matto. He probably wouldn't have amounted to much anyway. Beep, beep, lulwut, nub?

Posted as Part of

A quick disclosure before you wander down this rabbit hole. Matti asked me look into the scene below and discuss the possibility and likeliness of such a series of events being plausible, before inevitably concluding with ’Yeah.. but no’.

I haven’t watched Death Note in about five years, but I’m a physicist by trade, and have worked a lot in science outreach, so have ended up becoming Matti’s go to for ’Is this science bonked or not?’. I’ve also spent enough of my life online that I have picked up a certain set of skills that make dinner party conversations with me rather awkward. So anyway, enjoy.

So let us begin by discussing the elephant in the room: the plan is really quite stupid.

A fundamental aspect of any plan is that it can’t be dependent on many independent occurrences happening in the sequence that is desired, for it to be successful. If you watch through the scene with a healthy level of scrutiny and cynicism then you notice that with a few significant changes in the behaviour of various actors within the plot, the outcome would have been very different.

You could argue that the people in the room are very predictable, or that the masterminds behind this plan had thought it through so well that they knew exactly what would happen, but I’ve struggled to get three friends to meet at the pub at the right time and that involved significantly less props.

I don’t remember the exact context of this event, but they must have been an easier way to do it, and one that had at least one built in contingency.

But we’ll get back to my nitpicking later, let’s go through some of the physical events that happen.

There’s the fall, the catch, the thrown weight, the fake body, and the removal of the body.

We’ll start with the initial fall, because, well, it’s where the plan really takes off. We’ll get to the possible issues with this actual plan in a bit, but let’s focus on the physics of what is going on.

To be successful in landing on the mattress below, he needs to fall with almost no horizontal deviation. The overhand of the mattress below is marginal at best, and this is a necessary feature (as I’ll address later) for the plan to work at all.

Falling with only a vertical component is difficult, as any horizontal motion you gain will continue until you are able to correct it in some manner.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. At low speeds your behaviour in free fall is similar to that of an astronaut on the ISS. Because there is no base for you to push against any movement you do will generally have minimal impact on your actual location, and instead will just cause you to rotate around the centre of mass.

This can seem a little counter-intuitive at first because it goes against our normal day to day experiences with motion and mechanics. When we want to go forward we just ’go forward’ and usually lean ourselves forward slightly, but we are actually pushing back against the ground to launch ourselves forward. We don’t really consider this about our movements, because we do it all so instinctively.

When people are thrown in zero gravity environment, like vomit comet flights, they usually flail around and try to swim through the air. This is exceptionally inefficient because you can’t swim in air. (Start at 2:20 in the video below.)

So to be entirely factual, you can kind of swim through air, but you need to going quick enough (or in windy enough conditions) that you can divert the air around you to guide yourself.

However, the few feet fallen between balconies is not enough time to even get close to the right speed. So unless a strong gust blew him suddenly back into the building, he has got to fall almost straight down. Which is a lot harder than it seems even with all the caveats of caution that we have looked at above.

Firstly, the last point of anchorage was the balcony ledge, upon which he made himself fall off of to the right. As a result his momentum is heading away from the building already. From where he is it is possible for him to fall vertically, but it is just very unlikely. His stance before ’slipping’ is nearly completely upright, so his centre of gravity is very high. That point is also very far from the pivot point, so is able to move a great distance horizontal with only a slight lean over the edge, and once set in motion they’ll be very little to correct it.

This is a fundamental issue when trying to on to an that is not below you, but instead below the object you are hanging off of. If you watch some trying to swing to a balcony from the one above you’ll notice that is actually very awkward to do.

The basic principles of mechanics make the very first part quite difficult, but we won’t write it off as impossible, because it is technically possible, just bloody awkward.

So now we get to the next part which poses some problems: the mattress landing.

We have to assume that he is able to land on the mattress, but even landing on it isn’t a sure sign of success.

To illustrate this, I want you to go to your bedroom and lift your mattress over your head. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to come back.

It actually doesn’t matter when you have gone to get your mattress because the mental image of you struggling to lift is enough to amuse me, because as you would realise if you *had* attempted to lift the mattress, they’re really bendy.

Way too bendy to actually be reliable to do what the video shows. We see our daring protagonist land on the propped up mattress comfortably, and head into the room swiftly. There are a multitude of ways that this part of the plan could backfire horribly.

If any of you engaged in the typical childlike behaviours of the youthful, you may have jumped on your, or more likely your parents, bed. However, if you have ever tried to repeat this as an adult you may have realised that beds are actually quite crap for bouncing on.

If you apply any significant force to a mattress you just depress to the point where you are either resting on springs or leaning on the surface beneath.

This is going to be a lot worse when you have the mattress resting on single points or edges. When the mattress is propped on an edge (like in the scene) then most of the mattress can bend or morph to accommodate the new uninvited guest, but the part resting on the ledge can’t.

So the force applied here just crushes the mattress against the edge, so where there was a one a nice cushion separating you from smashing your ribs against the ledge, there is now just a few centimetres of incompressible fabric.

In other words, it’s going to hurt like hell.

The Manga

The Likely Reality

Some of you may be shouting about ’crumple zones’ or *impulses*. Firstly, well done for listening during your science lessons. Secondly, you’re still wrong. Sorry.

Impulse is the change of momentum of an object, and cannot be changed for a given interaction. Momentum is simply to the mass of an object, multiplied by its velocity. So for a set object at a set velocity, coming to a rest, the momentum change is always going to be the same, so the impulse will be constant. But the force acting on that object is related to the time taken for the momentum change to happen. Impulse is usually denoted by a J (don’t ask why) and is defined as

But for more simple cases we can simplify it to:

The first method is more thorough and can deal with more complex and interesting cases, but the second method is more applicable to every day examples. So working with the second equation let’s posit some numbers so we can illustrate our point. Let’s say you weigh 100kg and you’re travelling at 20ms-1 your momentum will be 2000Ns. If you, upon hitting the mattress, are going from that speed to rest your momentum change, or impulse, will be 2000Ns (as when you are not moving your velocity is zero so your momentum is also zero). The force you, the object feel, can now be found from the above equation for impulse, but we need to know the time over which it takes for you to stop. In a world without mattresses the time taken to stop is extremely short. If we assume that it takes 0.1 seconds to stop, then we have

This number is pretty high, and is like being rocked by a heavyweight boxers punch over your entire body. It’s not guaranteed to kill you, but it is like falling from a five story building, so unlikely to go well. But if we to simply extend the time it to stop by a factor of 5 (so it now takes half a second to stop) the force would drastically reduce to 4000N. Which would feel more equivalent to falling off a 2 foot high table (or around 70cm). An uncomfortable experience, and you can still break bones or damage your dignity, but significantly less likely to kill you.

But the ability of a mattress to replicate this increase of time to stop is highly suspicious, especially given the fall to that point. We have to take a few liberties because working out what exactly is going on in terms of precise numbers is not easy, but if we go for assumptions that make the events more likely, it looks like the fall is about two floors. This means that by the time he hits the mattress he is travelling at about 11ms-1. If we give him a weight of about 60kg then the force he experiences upon stopping at the mattress is a minimum of 3300N (but more likely nearing toward 6000N). This isn’t too bad as we showed earlier it was like falling off a table, but that was based on falling off a table onto a relatively flat floor. Here, we’re not.

We’re falling backwards onto a sharp edge. That force instead of being spread across the whole body is being focused directly across his back. Once again working on rough estimations, if we say the area of impact is about 0.006m2 (60cm is the width of his back, and the thickness of the ledge at impact is about a centimetre because his coming down on it at an angle) than the force per square metre climbs drastically 550,000Nm-2. That’s the kind of forcethat snaps bones and spinal columns pretty swiftly.

What we are reliant on for this part to work is that the super thick mattress used isn’t like most mattresses, but instead is incredibly springy and cushioning, and able to absorb the entirety of the force, without dislodging or sliding, and without bending backwards over the edge (throwing our unlucky chap to the fate he seems destined for anyway).

I suppose it is possible, and I have just been experiencing awful mattresses, but it is demanding a lot from us to expect mattresses to behave like they do in TV, rather than how they do in real life.

So we are now down to the final part of the ruse, the fake throw and body. I’m including these two acts together because the problems with both are linked together. The initial part is how long it will take for someone falling to hit the ground. Once again, we are going off assumptions, but they will illustrate the problem even if we are off by a floor or two.

From my guesstimates it looks like the mattress is two floors below the party, and the ground is 5 floors below the mattress. With a height of seven floors we get an approximate height of the fall of about 21m (a storey is about 3m), and due to a series of equations called the suvat equations we can work out how long it would take to fall that distance.

For reasons that are best left unexplained, s is the distance, u is the initial velocity, a is the acceleration, and t is the time. In our case we know most of these values already. As we have said before s is about 21m, u is zero because he initially starts at rest (yes, that weird daredevil feat is classified as rest in this case, physics is odd), and a is just the gravitational acceleration due to the earth, which is 9.81ms-2. So we can rearrange this all to find an equation for t

But that isn’t what happens here, instead the bag is thrown when he hits the mattress. If we assume the best case scenario, that the bag is thrown the moment he hits the mattress, then we instead have two equations that must be added together (one for the 6m fall, and another for the 15m fall). This gives a time to fall of a little over 2.8s. You may say that 0.8 of a second is too small for us to notice, but you would be surprisingly wrong (and it should be noted that the reality of the scene was the bag was thrown after he hit the mattress which would just increase the number).

Humans have a surprisingly good instinct for how things behave in Newtonian physics. It is the physics of every day motion.

When your friend is running across a field and you hurl a ball towards them you have instinctively solve a bunch of equations simultaneously to calculate where your friend will be, the trajectory of the ball, how long the ball will travel for, so where to aim for the intersection of friend and ball. Your brain is amazingly good at instinctively understanding how bodies behave at speeds and masses familiar to us, so when something happens within these ranges that feels wrong we notice very quickly. When the wannabe acrobat tumbled off the edge the people would have instinctively expected him to hit the ground at a certain time.

There would obviously be a margin of error, but the actual noise would come after they had begun to feel that disaster had been avoided. They wouldn’t know it immediately, but something about it would bother them, and would niggle at them. This could be avoided if the next part, which is too have some human juice surrounding the body.

Death Note's Aiber stands in (well sprawls in) as Matsuda's supposed corpse for the viewing of Yotsuba executives. Wedy stands by ready to scream as if witness to the fall and thud.

I don’t recommend looking up pictures of people who committed suicide by jumping off of great heights, but the person rarely looks all that pleasant afterwards. There are cases (the picture known as ’The Most Beautiful Suicide’ is a notable example) where the person looks relatively normal, but these are usually from when the impact was cushioned in a way that wasn’t enough to prevent death but was enough to stop the body being damaged.

There is usually some blood, some contortions of the limbs (that have broken or bent in inhuman ways), and in the most unpleasant of cases the head has cracked violently. These are pretty nasty aspects, but not beyond what you would expect the supposed mastermind of this act to know, and given the stakes these men have in deaths, they would probably know of this too.

They probably wouldn’t immediately call the whole act bullshit, but just like the extended fall time, it would continue to bother them and haunt them for reasons they can’t quite understand. They would probably at first assume it is because it was such an odd and ’tragic’ act, but those little errors, those disjointed continuities, they would begin to become more and more obvious to them.

Unless these men are truly the idiots that L assumes them to be (which I doubt because their supposed positions of seniority), someone would become suspicious of something, and seeing as they seemingly wanted him dead (once again, the narrative context is a little lost on me) I doubt that once they were rumblings that it could have been staged, it would be harder to put it back in Pandora’s box again.

Matsuda's Mattress Rescue: Implausible, but not Impossible

So after looking through the mechanics of the act it becomes obvious that the whole thing is possible, but decreasingly plausible.

They are so many little parts of it that either require the world to be more favourable than it usually is, and for those in the room to not notice any inconsistencies with the normal reality of such a large fall.

But the problem with the whole thing is that it fundamentally requires every single person in the room to act exactly as L predicts them to.

All it takes is for one person to run to the edge of the balcony, one person to attempt to physically remove him from his foolish feats, or one person to look down a little too soon and see a mattress poking out.

A good plan does not require that everything go an exact way for it to work, it just requires a few key events to ensure the course of fate runs the way you desire. The fundamental reason this plan would not work in the real world is because people like L think they can control everything but forget that humans have an amazing ability to go off script.